Daily Prescription for 2012

This is a New Year, 2012, and I wish you every good thing under the sun now and every second of this new year.  I wish that you will heal and that you will look back one day on your journey to recovery with a sense of achievement. This date is just one milestone in a long series of important events that define our lives – but it has value because it signifies new beginnings more than any other day of the year.  And that, in a way, is what surviving cancer is about:  being able to start anew every day, to cultivate selective amnesia about the unpleasant things of yesterday and to plan things for tomorrow, to build a list of planned pleasant experiences and reasons why you have to get through this.  Visualise clearly the rewards at the end of this particular journey to recovery.  And the more vividly you can imagine it, the easier it is to focus your attention on the reward and to move forward into a better place.

Every day we walk under the sun is a day providing the opportunity to make your mark in life.  This is an important thing to do – to honour your own existence so others will do the same.   There are no ordinary days,  just days in which to use the ordinary to define your unique and exquisitely meaningful existence.

Here is my prescription for speeding up your recovery. On every ordinary day try to:

• Cultivate a sense of appreciation for something ordinary or someone familiar who you have seen often before;
• Consciously will your thoughts from a dark place and instead recall a happy moment in the past;
• See ordinary things through the eyes of a child – look at them as if it is the first time you see it;
• Immerse yourself in something you enjoy doing and which you are good at;
• Do a kindness for someone else;
• Accept a kindness from someone else;
• Watch nature;
• Enjoy art;
• Experience the warmth of loving touch – hug someone, touch a loved one's cheek, hold hands;
• Reflect on something for which you are grateful.

For your own sake and the sake of your loved ones, eat – nurture your body and if you can, take in a little exercise outdoors.

Make yourself look presentable - bathe, put on clean clothes, comb you hair and if you can, add some colour to your look. Remember that a little lipstick goes a long way.

Visualise yourself well again, doing the things you used to, say a prayer for your recovery. Then behave as if it is already happening.

Even if you can’t do all of these things every day, try to do a as many as you can. It will make you feel better. When you feel better you will more likely get better. How do I know this? I done it myself.

Keep reading my blog in 2012 and I'll share the rest of my story with you.

oooOooo

I dedicate this post to my late brother Tom. For all he saw in me. For his love. And for my incredible good fortune having had him in my life.